Mission: Failed! And More

Well, so much for the detox.

I had these grand notions of doing a lemon juice detox diet thingie over the weekend, which is to say no food and just this lemon juice concoction drink 24/7 with the occasional glass of water or tea in between it all.

Naturally, it’d probably be a challenge for anyone, but boy, I gave up the first afternoon.

I’d like to blame GayBoy for it, since he went and called me up about four hours into the stupid diet thingie and asked me to go for a stroll for our neighbourhood’s “Community Days”. Well, first we wandered into Starbucks and I saw the reduced fat banana-chocolate chip loaf that made me weep with withdrawal, and THEN we wandered past the open-pit barbecue with burgers and franks. I practically started crying then and there, man.

GayBoy stepped in and forbade me to eat any of it, though. "You might wanna eat it, but you ain't gonna." Bastard! And he calls himself a friend!

That afternoon, I ate. Nothing glorious, really, and I’m keeping it reasonably healthy, but I ate. Last night, it was my brother and nephew who stomped whatever willpower I had left deep, deep into the ground: they had popcorn.

Anyone who knows me knows that popcorn’s high, high, high on my list of great food loves. I still weep about the demise of the Starlight Theatre, which closed a decade ago and somehow had the most magical popcorn known to man. I haven’t been to the Ridge theatre since it was taken over, but I pray to god they’re still serving white corn popcorn. White’s just so much better than yellow – just like with snow!

I have a couple fun answers I throw at counter people who investigate whether I want anything on my popcorn, when butter's not an option. (Fucking crime, that.)

"Would you like some buttery topping on that?"
"Butter, or buttery?"

Or, my favourite:

"Would you like some topping?"
"I'm more in the mood for some bottoming, but I'll take what I can get."

That said, I’m beginning to feel slightly better. I need to behave today. Sleeping on a couch for a substandard 6 hours sleep doesn’t compare with the awesomeness of the two ten-hour sleeps I had this weekend. Fucking HELL, was that good! SLEEP. Real, live, actual sleep! I can’t tell you the last time I slept so well for a single night, let alone two!

Yesterday, I was actually lacking black bags under my eyes! Damn, I looked good. They’re back today, but that’s ‘cos of a rough night not being in my own bed. It’s nice to be sleeping well again – means I might be getting past all this physical weirdness of the past few months. I’ve had insomnia – meaning less sleep than usual, more disruptive sleep – for about six months now. The past week things have begun to change. Hurrah! ‘Cos sleep so rocks.

My eBay stuff all closes tomorrow. (Do a user search for Scribecalledsteff to see what’s up for grabs.) The first bidding war is on my collectible advance reader’s excerpt of Hunter S. Thompson’s only ever novel, The Rum Diary. Some other dude’s tried listing his for $90 once, and $60 the next time. I listed mine for $10. We’ll see where it goes. ($12.50 now.)

Is there any writer whose style is stolen more often than Hunter S.? I freely admit he’s my greatest writing influence. I have no shame there. If you're gonna steal, steal from the right people, and if you're gonna imitate them, imitate them with pinache. I would hope I've done both.

My sidebar has my tribute to Hunter that I wrote the day he died. (I think it's one of my best op-ed works, personally, but I'm biased.) I’m not surprised he killed himself; I’m surprised he waited so long. I’m surprised it didn’t happen the first month of Bush’s second term, to be honest. Politics mattered that much to him.

Ah, well. I just hope I get a decent price on that booklet. (And everything else that’s up for grabs.)

Tomorrow’s the big closing day for everything, as I mentioned. I’m excited to see what bidding wars ensue. A few items are being “watched,” so we’ll see what I yield. Yay.